


at the end of the earth

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Day 6: Fluff Friday, F/M, Healing, Inspired by Percabeth, The Last Agni Kai (Avatar), Underwater kisses, Zutara, Zutara Fanwork Appreciation Week 2020, mostly - Freeform, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27755293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: She looked at me like she was drinking in the fact that I was still here. And I realized I was doing the same thing. The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.Zuko and Katara share a moment together after the Agni Kai, when they don't quite know whether or not the rest of the world is burning.What do you do when you have nothing to lose?
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	at the end of the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. This is not very soft. I tried. Um . . . I'm deceptive? The quotes this is based on are fluffy and this is briefly fluffy, so, um.

They both stared at Azula for a hard, long minute. Then Katara tugged at Zuko's arm, just a bit, as though to remind him of the cruel reality they were still so deeply entrenched in— as though he needed a reminder of the war that was still looming ahead. 

"We won," she said. 

"Aang isn't back yet," Zuko responded cleanly, clearer than his voice sounded in his head. His heart clenched when he saw the ground absorb Azula’s tears. Seeing  _ Azula  _ in chains . . . he felt as though he had won something, a war that had been raging since her birth. And yet it also seemed so absolutely wrong. Azula,  _ crying,  _ Azula the queen, the prodigy, Azula who had always been better than him . . . on the floor, crying. Her hair was choppy in front of her face, and she seemed almost broken. He wanted to talk to her, but he also knew that wasn't a good idea. He didn't know what he would say. After what she would have done . . . 

Azula had broken the moment her lightning had sunk into her brother's heart, but he couldn't bring himself to pity her for that, to feel any kind of camaraderie or love, because she had been aiming for Katara. That had been done on purpose. Azula had placed him with her in the catacombs, had seen the look of betrayal in her eyes after Ba Sing Se . . . had seen Katara grab him at the Western Air Temple. She'd seen their conversation when they'd arrived here, had seen him tell her that he didn't— want Azula to hurt Katara— he  _ doesn't.  _

It's funny that Azula had taught him something about himself. Because she had— she'd spent her life trying to climb under his skin and bring all his weaknesses to light. She'd known Katara was his—  _ weakness—  _ before he had. 

He looked away from his sister and faced the waterbender again. He'd called her many names over the course of the past year; he'd chased her and betrayed her and done so many unspeakable things, yet she'd forgiven him, healed him . . . 

"Thank you, Katara." He said it again as though she hadn't heard his words the first time, though he knew she must have. He'd meant them, too. It had been a thanks for more than saving him. It had been a thank you for her forgiveness, for her trust, for her power and her success. 

He learned a lot about himself during the final Agni Kai. He learned a lot about himself when he reached out for Katara as his sister shot lightning at her, when she reached back. He learned a lot when he stopped shuddering, stopped racking his soul, and opened his eyes, and found peace in the simple, clandestine fact that she was alive— that her heart was still beating, that she’d succeeded where he couldn't, that she wasn't hurt anymore. 

Katara had spent years suffering due to this war, and he opened his eyes and made her another silent promise— never again. He would fix the world. His father, if he defeated Aang, would kill Zuko first, but he needed to tell her that. He needed to tell her how sorry he was, how happy he was, how he knew the world hadn't been fixed— knew that Aang wasn't back yet— and how he had hope despite that. 

He'd wasted too much time. "Katara?"

She pressed against his arm again, and when he turned he saw her eyes almost shining. He couldn't tell if those tears were happy or not, quite. "You're right. We haven't won. We won't know."

"Do we just wait now?"

She bit her lip and tugged at his sleeve further, pulling him away from his sister, whose cries had turned silent after her voice tired out. "I'm going to need to take you . . . some kind of water . . . and . . . fix you up a little more. We should . . . do something, while we wait."

"Do we leave her here?" he asked her. 

Katara looked up at him as though she knew something he quite didn't— not necessarily something terrible, just something large. She looked at him as though she thought something was about to end, something that hadn't begun. 

"Your call, Fire Lord Zuko."

His heart stopped. He'd known, tangentially, this entire time, that the point of his and Katara's interception of— of a  _ coronation—  _ had been, definitively, to take the throne from Azula. And then to give it back to him. And Iroh had told him mere hours ago that the throne was his, and yet . . . 

"We'll talk to the Fire Sages and ensure they'll keep her here," he muttered. "We can go. There's no point in getting our hopes up too high before the comet finishes."

The power of the sun still seared his soul. Katara glanced up at him and then put on her medically-concerned expression, forcing him to walk back to the palace, holding him as he staggered a bit. 

In those moments, he let his heart open itself up and take her in. He let himself feel something he had been afraid to do. It’d been a mess, this entire war and the past few weeks as he’d joined the Avatar’s gang. He’d never in his life had so much fun, had real friends. 

He’d never had something he was so afraid to start he never began it. 

He looked at Katara— just stopped and stared. He thought about her healing him, eyes shining— he thought about the way she had reached for him as the lightning jumped out at them, the way it mirrored Ba Sing Se. He thought about how she had been the first person to show him kindness in a long, long time— he thought about how he had paid her back by attempting to kill her. He thought about the many ways he had tried to find her forgiveness, and then how he had finally found it. 

He thought, then, of all the feelings he had been compressing inside of him, the ones he had not wanted to let out, or admit, because the world was ending, and there was no point in starting something that was about to end. 

Katara stopped him as they rounded into the palace, and he guided her through empty halls towards his former rooms. While they were walking her voice shook and she asked him a question, quietly, as though he hadn’t already answered it. “Why did you take that lightning for me?”

“You would’ve done something just like that for me,” he responded, quietly, and in that very second he realized— he realized—

He realized everything he had been keeping inside of himself, the inklings of love he’d wrapped into his chest, too afraid to love and then lose. Love, that’s the word— love is something he’d thought he’d had, with Mai, but he realized he hadn’t, really. Mai wasn’t like him. Mai was a life he wanted and could never have, nobility and grace all placed together, while Katara was something else; beautiful, passionate. She treated him like he was put together, and she understood that he was flawed, and accepted that. She did not want him to be Prince Zuko, or Fire Lord Zuko— the thought seemed to disappoint her, almost. 

And he didn’t know whether she felt the same way, whether or not realization was a steady cloud in her heart, soaking her soul with the simple understanding of trust, what occurs when two people understand each other, when words are simple apparitions for something that cannot be said. He didn’t know, but he wasn’t willing to lose anything before the comet ended. He only had a few hours to go, anyway. 

“There’s a pool in the side,” he said. “It should still be filled— you should be able to use it to bend.”

He hadn’t looked at her so far, looked at  _ her—  _ her eyes— because he was afraid that she would see him empty himself up for her and reject all that he could give. That is all that Zuko can give; he can give others parts of himself, and what he has. That is all he can do. But he stared at her as he led her to another part of the palace, and she stared at him like she was broken, almost in concern. 

His steady pace faltered as his muscles clenched, and the first thing he saw was her frightened look. “I’m fine.”

“You will be,” she muttered, pain in her words, and he suddenly felt almost— better. He felt as though he’d just unearthed something. He stumbled over the threshold of the spa-pond in the royal family’s quarters and took it in in all of its depths. He could fall into there and drown, but he wasn’t afraid of water, or of falling into the ocean. 

He was, of course, already lost to its beauty. 

“Before we— before you fix me,” he started— 

“You’re plenty good at fixing yourself.” 

He smiled, and it was strong, and it was sure of this— this moment. “Do you feel it too?”

“Do I feel what?” her voice shook, and his heart pained, but he kept going. 

“Please, Katara. You know. It’s been weeks and— you know. It’s you. Some part of me thinks it’s been you since the North Pole.”

“Zuko, don’t . . .”

“The world might be about to end,” he told her, clutching her side, the water rolling underneath them. Katara’s blue eyes, her defining feature, were welled up with something that didn’t quite seem to be tears. It was as though hope and fear were warring through her. “I don’t want to have this regret. I need to tell you. But I want . . . can you tell me, first?”

Suddenly, she grabbed his arm until he was right next to her, until he was staring at her hair and she was staring at his scar, at the star he’d borne for her on his skin. It felt intimate, and impossible, and unreal. 

“I’m the Avatar’s girl.”

He remembered the play, the surety in Aang’s expression, and he threaded his heart together. “I know.”

“You’re the Fire Lord. You’re pulling together a broken country.”

“I know.” He reached down and shifted his fingers through hers, between their bodies. Then he closed his eyes and leaned up against her forehead, his lips pressing against her head. 

“We’ll never be able to finish anything.”

“I know,” he confirmed. “Give me something to keep me peace, please.”

“It’s wrong,” she said thickly, her voice ringing with confusion and sheer hopelessness. “I already know what I have to do. And you know. I’ve been trying so hard to not feel this way. It’s not fair, Zuko,” she hit her fists lightly up against his bare chest. The thuds created a dull pain, but he welcomed them. It grounded him. “I just want to feel something this right, and it’s not fair.”

“The world is about to end. If it does— can we have this?”

Zuko could feel her eyelashes against him. “Yeah. Yeah, we can.”

Then she pushed him into the water, and he let her. The pool was still and yet fresh, clear and blue, and it didn’t sting his wounds. The water that encompassed his body as he fell in swept across him and left him gasping for something he didn’t know existed— it was  _ Katara,  _ and as they kept on falling until they touched hardrock she pressed a palm to his face, on his scar, like Ba Sing Se. 

“Zuko,” she said. He couldn’t respond back, and she seemed to realize why; seconds later, they were locked into an air bubble at the bottom of the pool. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

“Okay,” he whispered back in the absolute, still calm of the water surrounding him. It felt as though they’d both escaped to the Spirit World. “Okay. Tell me.”

Perhaps she was crying; he couldn’t quite tell, not underwater. 

“I think I might be able to love you.”

Zuko traced her face with his fingers, running his hands across her eyelids until she was forced to close them. “I  _ know  _ I could.”

Then he reached down and pressed his warm lips against her, and she pushed into him. They existed simply to belong in each other’s arms— it felt right, and he felt at peace for the first time in a long, long time. Ozai could have come in and killed him at that very moment, and he would have died with a smile on his face. 

It was the best underwater kiss of all time. 

* * *

Zuko laughs at Sokka’s terrible painting inside of the Jasmine Dragon, Mai a heavyweight at his side. He sees Katara leave out of the corner of his eye and turns away from his friends— perhaps he can join her. 

She doesn’t make eye contact when she reaches Aang and then kisses him, in the sun’s light— for the world to see, not in secret, because that is what she and Aang _are;_ they are the world’s. He knows that. He’s known. 

When she looks back at him his heart cracks— firmly, this time. He doesn’t think he will ever be whole again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the ending?
> 
> A big thanks to my besties princess_zel (@alwaysprincesszel) and ramblingraccoon (@avatar-the-last-jerkbender) for tossing this together for me because Dee does not know how to past tense _at all_.  
> This is inspired by [this post](https://antarcticasx.tumblr.com/post/634172354664284160/avatar-the-last-airbender-percy-jackson-and) by @basignse on Tumblr. Thanks for reading and I hope you had an amazing Zutara Fanworks Appreciation Week!


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